Part 5

“Oh, if I _could_!” she said, anxiously. “I taught school one winter, but the pay was so small. And I’ve tried—you will laugh, Mr. Archibald, at my telling you these things—but I’ve tried story writing. I was _so_ hopeful about it, and it took as many as ten rejections before I became convinced; and now, if my Art fails me——”

She gave a little fluttering sigh.

“I think you have talent.”

“Perhaps it is only enthusiasm——”

“That amounts to the same thing. It will keep you up to your work. They used to tell me I had talent, but I had no enthusiasm, so I dropped it. I wish to encourage you,” he added; “I hope you will go on. It takes a lot of work, but you have just the right temperament. You _will_ work. You _will_ get on, and when you become celebrated, Miss Price, you won’t forget your old friends?”

He realized that it was a rather bold step forward, and he trembled for her reply.

“I shall always recommend your house,” she said, a little stiffly, making him feel more than ever her aristocratic superiority to landlords, “and I shall always remember your kindness. We went to at least six boarding-houses until we saw your sign—we saw the landladies. Really, Mr. Archibald, you have no idea how vulgar and unartistic _most_ of the houses were. There was always a disagreeable odor, as if somebody was frying something. If I _do_ succeed, as I wish, and make friends, and get to be known, and all, you may be certain that I shan’t forget you. I may organize an Art class, and take the whole house myself!”

He went no further. It was enough to him, as he sat opposite her in his evening dress, his rich opal, set with diamonds, flashing on his white shirt-front, his lawn tie, low shoes, white waistcoat—everything in the latest and most expensive style—it was enough for Mr. Jerome Archibald to sit there and smoke his delicate Havana, and reflect that he at least had her promise to do what she could to recommend his boarding-house!

The next day, at dinner, he again suggested, in an offhand way, that Miss Price should turn her attention to portrait-painting. Miss Perkins seriously objected at once.

“Your father would never give his consent,” she said. “There was old Mr. Raymond, who lived on the Poor Farm, because he found portrait-painting didn’t pay.”

“Mr. Raymond painted dreadful, hideous caricatures,” said Elvira. “He painted my mother’s portrait, and father is always throwing him in my face. But I don’t know. I have no one to begin on except aunt, and I have tried and tried, and I can’t get anything but the expression of her spectacles.”

Even Aunt Perkins laughed at this a little.

“Begin on me,” ventured Archibald. “Call it the ‘Portrait of an Ideal Landlord.’”

There was a little pause. The ladies rose without replying, and Archibald followed them into the drawing-room, feeling indefinitely that he had been too forward. As he lit his cigar and sat near an open window, feeling the cool southern breeze, he reflected that it was not improbable that in East Village the only landlord known to them was the keeper of a common tavern. It amused him to think of their primitive, quaint ignorance of city ways. He pictured the small life of East Village, Vt., the narrow social horizon, the strange interest in politics, the religious intolerance, the “strong” views on the temperance question which obtained there, and which leaked out from Miss Perkins as the days went on into August. The easy sense of accommodation to their new surroundings also amused him.

Archibald returned to the portrait. “I’d rawther like to have one for the dining-room,” he said; “I think it would interest some of my boarders when they come back next winter. I could give you no end of sittings, Miss Price——”

Elvira exhibited some hesitancy:

“Well, I might try,” she said. “But I’m not at all good at hair——”

“Shave off my mustache if you like,” said the infatuated Archibald, with a grimace.

The ladies changed the subject decorously. It was plain that Archibald’s little advances toward an intimacy, to be derived from portrait-painting, were being met in rather an unencouraging spirit, don’t you know! The next day he invited them, as an agreeable diversion, to visit Coney Island; but Elvira made an excuse that she had no time for “pleasuring.” They seemed, indeed, to have few pleasures. The morning walk in Central Park was given up; Miss Perkins spent the greater part of the time when Elvira was at the Art School in riding to and fro, apparently, upon street-cars. One day she came home very late to dinner, saying that she had discovered the “Belt Line.” While waiting her return for dinner, Archibald had an agreeable _tête-à-tête_ with Elvira.

IV.

He was growing more and more in love with this self-contained, charming, young New Englander. It had come to a time when he felt that he must speak. They had been at No. 41 now these four weeks, aunt and niece, and yet they had managed to preserve their distance. He was no nearer than the day they arrived.

He reflected that the pleasant little daily comedy which had amused him so entirely would have to be given up the instant he made known to her his state of feeling. But at the same time he felt he could act out the equivocation no longer. He must, as a gentleman, make a clean breast of his deception. Archibald had seen a great deal of women, and he believed that he understood them pretty well. He believed he understood Miss Price well enough to reckon upon the flattery of her sudden fascination that first day, for him, as the cause of his deceit. He planned to boldly tell her this, one day, while they were waiting for Miss Perkins to revolve around the “Belt Line.” But Elvira turned the conversation against his will. She seemed to have remarkable intuitions, this strange creature! Perhaps she had an intuition then. At any rate, she announced their determination to return to East Village the following Saturday.

“Father writes that his ague is no better—that I must come home,” she said. “There are, besides, the preserves——”

Archibald expressed no surprise. “If you go,” he said, “I think I’ll take a run up there also. I have the greatest curiosity about East Village.”

“There is nothing—it is dreadfully—I wouldn’t have you visit East Village for all the world!”

“Why?”

“Because—” she replied, sedately.

Recognizing this as a sufficient reply, Archibald took a seat on the sofa near her. She was in one of her pretty, soft, white muslins, tied, this evening, with ribbons of the very latest shade of fashionable apple-green. He had noticed the steady growth of fashion in the girl’s appearance, but he was not quite prepared for the dozen silver bangles, which jingled as she raised her hand to her hair. She had a pretty arm and hand, and were it not for the bangles, which somehow altered the current of his thought, he had nerved himself up to the point of taking, or trying to take, her hand in his, and telling her in a manly way his story. The bangles, however, don’t you know, diverted him. He could not be serious. He laughed. It was as if he had happened upon a wood nymph in seven-button kid gloves! She misinterpreted his laughter, believing that he intended to ridicule the pastoral delights of East Village.

“I’m not ashamed of Vermont,” she said, drawing away a little. “I can’t bear to have it laughed at. You would laugh at East Village, Mr. Archibald—you laugh at everything. You are not sincere. You have too much of the city in you—too much of its glitter and—” She caught his eyes directed laughingly upon her bangles, and blushed guiltily.

“Time works its changes, don’t you know,” he said. “Even you, Miss Elvira, are a _little_ affected.”

“I hate myself for it,” she said; “I _do_ find myself growing to like things I never cared for before. I think of what I have on from morning to night,” she confessed, guiltily, with an imploring glance at her landlord.

“Can the dead dulness of midsummer in the city have wrought so wondrous a change?” he laughed. “How very gay, really, you will be next winter.”

“Seriously,” said Elvira, “I look forward to a visit to East Village as a complete change and rest. When I think of the white, dead walls of our meetinghouse, I am glad; when I think of the lack of color in everybody up there, it makes me glad; when I think of the plainness of everything, the simpleness, the _truth_ of everything, I’m glad to go back. But don’t you—don’t come up to Vermont, Mr. Archibald. Really, please, don’t.”

Again Archibald felt impelled to seize her white, pretty hand, and tell his story. He had never come to so intimate a point before. What chance had he ever to come so near again? All that his mother and sisters could write would have no effect upon him now. All that his friends at the club would say, all that his Aunt Newbold would say—his Aunt Newbold was the formidable dragon of his family—nothing, he felt sure, would alter his mind. He had deliberated a month, he would deliberate no more. Besides, she was going away; perhaps if he did _not_ speak his opportunity would never again occur. He paled a little as he was about to open his lips.

Bother!

The chalk-faced maid entered with a card on a silver tray.

V.

Mr. Jerome Archibald had very few hatreds; people whom he disliked he carefully avoided. Being fastidious to an extreme, he had few friends, but he likewise had no enemies. He had, however, a certain cousin who lived in Boston, who had in some way early offended him, and for whom he continued to have a most inexplicable dislike. Hunnewell Hollis was a Harvard man, who had been a great swell at college, and who was considered “clevah.” He was a year or two older than Archibald, and he usually presumed a little upon his age and upon his superior education. It was Hunnewell Hollis’s card which was brought up on the silver tray.

Archibald impatiently rose and went down to the reception-room. There he found Hollis walking up and down the room, apparently in some excitement.

“Jerry, this won’t do, old man!—heard ladies’ voices upstairs! ’Twon’t do! Lucky I ran down with the yacht. Now I’m going to carry you off with me. By the way, Somers and Billy Nahant and Jack Chadwick are here, and I took the liberty to invite them here overnight—knew you were alone—knew you would be glad to put them up.”

“By Jove, you do me great honor! Unfortunately I haven’t room for you—I’ve only just let the house—taken—by Jove! I must take in the sign.”

Archibald’s face betrayed no sign of his justifiable prevarication.

“Well, then, as it is dinner-time I’ll stay to dinner with you.”

“Sorry, very sorry. But the ladies who have taken the house would think it very odd——”

“Well, how in the devil are _you_ dining with them, Jerry?”

“They asked me, in order to discuss the terms. A few details before signing the lease, don’t you know!”

“Well, it puts me in a rather awkward position; I’ve left the fellows your address; they’ll be here shortly.”

“Why don’t you head ’em off?” suggested Archibald, coolly.

Mr. Hunnewell Hollis gave his cousin a glance of anger. “The whole thing is rather fishy,” he said, suspiciously. “I trust, Jerry, for the honor of the family——”

Archibald never quite detested his cousin so much before.

“There are a great many adventuresses about; they are on the lookout for rich young men like you, Jerry,” and Hunnewell Hollis, giving his cousin a rather gravely serious nod, took up his hat and cane and departed.

Archibald went directly upstairs. He heard a rustle of a dress against the furniture. Had Elvira been listening? He hoped not.

VI.

Adventuress! How that odious word rang in his ears as he entered the room where the sweet primrose face was still in its corner of the sofa. He swore he would never write to, nor speak to, Hunnewell Hollis again. He had done with him forever. Yet, had he heard the rustle of her dress? It gave him a slightly disagreeable sensation to think that it were possible. Elvira Price apparently had not moved from her seat. She was in the same pretty attitude in which he had left her, leaning back, easily, against the corner of the sofa, her hands crossed in her lap. As he entered it seemed to him that she was studying his face.

“I was so anxious about aunt,” she said. “I went out to the stairs thinking I heard her come in. Do you know, it isn’t the Belt Line only; she goes to a mission—a boy’s mission. She has taken the greatest interest in it; all the teachers have gone away for the summer. It is in an out-of-the-way part of the city, and it worries me.”

Archibald hesitated a moment, then he said:

“Did you hear the row with my cousin? He was very impertinent; but all Bostonians are impertinent.”

The name Bostonian seemed to give her a slight sensation.

“You have been in Boston?” he asked.

“N—yes, and I, too, found Bostonians impertinent.” She gave him an appealing glance; then she added, after a pause, “I find New York quite different.”

Miss Perkins came in shortly after, much fatigued, and Archibald after dinner went over to the club, where he fell in with Hunnewell Hollis again, in spite of the fact that he did his best to avoid him. Hunnewell had found his yachting friends, and they had had a very good dinner. They were all very talkative—Somers, Billy Nahant, and Jack Chadwick. They were in flannel suits and yachting caps, and each was bronzed and sunburned to a fine copper hue.

“What is the name of the people who have taken your house?” asked Hunnewell, bluntly, after he had introduced Archibald to his friends.

“Miss Perkins and her niece, Miss Elvira Price,” replied Archibald, coldly.

Instantly Billy Nahant pricked up his ears. “Why,” he said, “isn’t she an actress? Didn’t she play in Boston last winter?”

“Who?” asked Archibald.

“Why, Elvira Price. She made quite a hit, I believe—her _début_ too—at the Boston Theatre. She played to crowded houses exactly two weeks; at the end of that time, to everyone’s surprise, she went home to Vermont, whence she came, and she calmly gave up the stage forever!”

Archibald’s face was a study.

“Did you know you were letting your mother’s house to actresses?” asked Hollis, with a sneer.

“Miss Price is probably a different person from the one to whom Mr. Nahant has reference,” said Archibald, coldly.

“I remember the girl,” said Jack Chadwick. “She was very young and beautiful, and fitted her part admirably. She made an excellent _ingénue_. She held herself well—not at all gushing, don’t you know—but poetic, _spirituelle_. She played in ‘A Scrap of Paper’—some picked-up company with her. She carried the play very well. I have often wondered what became of her.”

“So this is the creature who has rented your house, and whom you dined with to-night,” sneered Hollis; “an _ingénue_, indeed!”

“Miss Price is a lady—not a ‘creature,’” said Archibald, haughtily. “As far as I have seen, she can only honor our house by remaining under its roof.” And Archibald bowed stiffly, and took his leave in the midst of an embarrassed silence.

VII.

He preferred not to see Elvira again before she took her departure for Vermont the next day. Her aunt remained in the city to look after her “mission work.” Archibald presented her, as the gift of a rich, unknown friend, fifty dollars—their board-money—to send some of her boys into the country. After Elvira’s departure he became very despondent. Elvira’s image was broken to him, and while she had not become in his mind quite an adventuress, yet she had concealed her former life from him. She had deceived him.

But as the days went by and he missed her, he found that he must speak to Miss Perkins about Elvira’s acting, or go through a serious case of nervous prostration. He said very bluntly to her, one day, at dinner:

“So I hear your niece is a great actress.”

Miss Perkins gave him a quick, sharp glance.

“She _has_ acted,” she replied. “But Elvira Price had too much conscience to act _long_.”

He gave a sigh of relief.

“She acted in Boston, because she was bound to try it. She wanted to try everything—everything that would keep her father out of the poor-house and educate the family. But acting, Mr. Archibald, is a dreadful business! As soon as Elvira saw into it a little she quit. The air wasn’t pure enough, somehow, for her. Elvira, she needs awful pure air!”

Again Archibald felt a certain glow of satisfaction steal over him.

“Do you know,” he said, after a suitable pause, “I am more than half-inclined to make her angry by running up to East Village.”

Miss Perkins gave a little quinzied laugh of satisfaction. She was beginning to like Archibald very much.

“It would startle Elvira; but she’d be pleased,” ventured the thin old maid. “She’d be pleased—in spite of everything!”

A few days later Archibald, after half a day’s journey, found himself in Vermont. As the train drew near East Village the mountains grew higher and the scenery wilder. He could see the great August moon roll itself above the high crest of the mountains to the west. Though Archibald was far from superstitious, he was pained to observe that he saw the moon over his left shoulder.

It was late when he stumbled from the steps of the car upon the wooden platform of the station at East Village. It was dark, also, and to him, extraordinarily cold. He groped his way, shivering, past a blinding reflector, where half a dozen men in cow-hide boots were examing a list of invoices, to what he could dimly outline as the village stage. No one spoke to him, and he found that no one seemed to care whether he, the sole passenger, was carried. He had visions of an unpleasant nature of being deposited inside the coach in a shed or stable to await the morning. He felt the stage pitch and toss for twenty minutes like a bark upon an angry sea. When all was still again he found that the driver had drawn up before a white-pillared old-fashioned house, which stood a little back from the street. At the side of the gate a small wooden building bore the sign, which was illuminated by the stage lamp,

_Ephraim B. Price, Attorney at Law._

“Oh,” said Archibald, “this is Elvira’s house, and the driver is delivering my box of flowers.”

He leaned forward, hoping to catch sight of the fair young girl when the front-door opened to take in the box. But he was disappointed. The impatient driver had merely left it on the steps of the high, white-pillared portico, after giving the door-bell a vigorous pull.

Then followed a further few minutes of pitching and tossing, and the stage drew up before the tavern-door. A row of a dozen men, whose hats were drawn down over their eyes, and whose feet fell instantaneously from the rail to the floor as the coach drew up, came forward, and one of them betrayed a desire to grasp Archibald’s in his own horny hand. “Guess ye’ll stop overnight? Th’ain’t no other place. ’Sprised to see a stranger to-night, tew. Will you go in an’ sign—will you, sir?”

“So this uncouth ruffian,” thought Archibald, “is Elvira’s ideal landlord! No wonder she distrusts me!”

“We’re local temp’rance,” said the landlord. “An’ no licker’s being seen to East Village for nigh six years. Not a drop, sir, an’ it’s bustin’ my ho-tel higher’n a kite. Yes, it is!”

Archibald expressed commiseration.

“As I tell’d Squar’ Price, ‘yeou high-toned, ’ristocratic temp’rance folk’ll hurt East Village when ye close the hotel!’ Why, when a gent comes up here fr’ the city, he wants to be able to call fer a glass o’ gin or a glass o’ whiskey ’s often ’s he likes.”

Archibald thought he detected the faint smell of liquor upon the landlord’s breath as he talked, and it occurred to him that his obtrusively free-and-easy-manner was the result of a secret violation of the prohibitory local license law. “Bein’ fr’ the city, as you be,” said the landlord, lowering his voice to a whisper, and placing his heavy hand on Archibald’s shoulder familiarly, “I calc’late you’re cold an’ ready for a tidy drink. I calc’late I’m talkin’ to a gent as is used ter lickerin’ up, even ef ’tis agin the law?” To humor him, Archibald admitted that he had no stringent prohibitory sentiments.

“Well then, good! Jest you foller me!”

Archibald followed the landlord out into the hotel yard, where the latter pulled up the flaps of a cellar-door. Hearing the creaking sound, and taking it for an admonitory signal, the row of men on the hotel piazza, who had resumed their seats, again dropped their feet on the floor, rose, and came out into the yard in Indian file, in perfect silence. Archibald followed his landlord down into the darkness of the cellar, where, beneath the dim light of a solitary candle he perceived a cask with a wooden spigot, and near it half a dozen tin cups. The men filed down the steps behind him. “You’ve heerd o’ apple jack?” asked the landlord, in a whisper.

Archibald nodded.

“Drink that, then!” and the landlord handed him a cupful of the beverage. It was enough to intoxicate him. He drank but a very little; as he saw the other men were waiting, he passed the cup on to them.

“Welcome to East Village, stranger,” said one of the men, drinking. “Be you up ’ere a-sellin’ marchandize?”

“Oh, no!”

“Be you come to see the Squar’?”

“Well—perhaps—yes.”

“Wa’l, this is a dead give away!” and the men laughed noisily, as rustics will. “Don’t mention this ’ere cider to Squar’ Price!”

The next morning was delicious, the air clear and smelling of the mountains. The mist hung above the distant river, and a line of hills showed their green wooded outline above it. As Archibald breathed the sweet country air, he stepped more briskly, felt less of his city malaria, drew into his lungs a long breath of the fresh, invigorating summer wind, which seemed to come to him across the high upland, from such a vast distance.

He came to the old colonial gate and entered. The Hon. Ephraim B. Price was just at the moment sauntering down the gravel path from his house to his law office. As he saw Archibald enter, he came forward somewhat more rapidly. He was a man of large frame, gaunt rather than spare, of prominent cheekbones, of lengthy chin-beard. His eyes were very keen, and his entire expression was one of patient alertness—as if there was very little to be alert over, but a deep necessity of keeping up a reputation. Archibald learned afterward how indefatigable a partisan, and how strenuous a believer in the Republican party the Hon. Ephraim was.

“Sir,” he said, after greeting Archibald, and looking with a grin of pity upon his engraved card—a grin directed chiefly to the “Mr.” before Archibald’s name—“you are Elvira’s landlord down to New York—tell me, how is your city and State going, do you think?”

Archibald felt taken aback. Politics were something of which he knew nothing. He was but barely aware that it was a presidential year. In the city he kept severely out of politics, as hardly the employment of gentlemen.

“I—I—think it will go Democratic.”

A more violent frown than before. “If I thought so, sir; if I imagined so; if for one instant I believed that what we fought for during the war—Eh, Elvira? Here is Mr. Archibald!”

Then the Hon. Ephraim turned abruptly and entered his office, where, it may be added, he sat for the next hour, his feet on the cold stove before him, meditating where his next fee was to come from, and breaking out with an occasional invective against the wicked democracy.

Before the old gentleman was a square window which looked out over the town. All day long he sat before this, as upon a watch-tower—a censor of village morals and deportment.

“Father is so interested in the election,” apologized Elvira. “But how strange to see you here; and I told you not to!”

She held a small gray kitten in her arms, which she stroked slowly. She was still in his favorite white muslin, and she had a gentle, sweet flush of pleasure in her face.

“I came, Miss Price—because—don’t you know—I—aw—missed you,” and he smiled.